Posts by sevin

Will2k can probably provide a more in-depth explanation than me, but in general, the higher your resolutions, the larger the map file and the lower the frame rates.

Will has an article here on MapCore that explains some of this.

I really like the assets you've made so far. I was not a fan of FMPONE's rendition of de_season because I thought the place looked entirely too clean and bright, but something about the way you've done it is pleasing to me... I think it may be because you've broken up the colors more so they're not as flat as Season's look.

That photogrammetry thing is neat. I've had that Ethan Carter game on my wishlist for awhile, never knew about photogrammetry.

Is there any consumer software out now that can do this photogrammetry thing?

As for your hypothesis, I don't think we'll be able to test it for many more years. Source 2 news has all but stopped for anything but Dota (correct?), so I'd guess we aren't even getting it for another 5 years. Maybe they'll introduce it with a new CS, like they did for Source with HL2. Who knows.

This would be super cool though, I want to get Ethan Carter even more now.

Quote from JSadones

20 hours ago, JSadones said: What does this actually do ? A "Hello" on your main post doesn't tell much. /emoticons/[email protected] 2x" title=":)" width="15">

Can you not tell from the screenshots? It's a brushwork editor.

Quote from esspho

When I started to make props and textures this article gave me a pretty good overview of what to do and how to do it regarding individual texture maps .

There is also a good summary over at the polycount wiki.

Hopefully that helps for starters but I'm just a hobbyist in that regard. Maybe some of the pros can pitch in?

Thanks for the links! Some good resources. I'm hoping will2k or FMPONE or someone with some Source texture creation experience will chime in at some point.

I feel like this would be a great subject for a MapCore article. I'm wondering about the various material maps people use for world or model textures. Stuff like the albedo maps, roughness, specularity, detail maps etc. Some discussion on their uses and methods of creation would be great too. I know a number of these are used in CS:GO and other modern engines, just not sure of what situations are best to use them in, or how to create them really.

Quote from NihiL

I like how they didn't even mention they fixed the shaded textures view in Hammer. That was my favorite thing haha.

I wonder how much we'll see phong materials for brushes from now on. I gotta do some testing in regards to looks and performance but if the latter isn't an issue - why not use it pretty much everywhere? Any reason against it apart from possible performance issues?

I remember reading a thread with some good information and experiments with phong shading on world materials. Search MapCore for it. I imagine it will be used quite a lot as the effect looks believable.

Thanks for the information! How recent was the Train overhaul? Was it done in collaboration with Volcano? Haven't been paying much attention to CS:GO for awhile. The new assets are certainly worthy of the hr prefix.

With the release of Operation: Wildfire last week, Valve introduced some new features to Hammer, material parameters, and shaders. All seem to be really nice additions and greatly increase the potential realism of future levels for CS:GO and beyond.

This also may explain the recent difficulties some mappers have experienced with VRAD, as there were several major adjustments made to the process.

See for yourself and report back here with your thoughts!

Quote from Squad

Yes, I checked with Pakrat to see if any models were packed. And extracted all of them that I spotted. Strangely enough they're all located in a folder called "autocombine/". That folder name and the fact it works just fine (without extracting anything) for most other people and the fact that all "autocombine" props in Hammer look like a combination of regular modular props make it seem something went horribly wrong somewhere for some of us

Yes, I noticed the model paths included "autocombine" and I thought it was just a decompiling mistake. Thanks for the download, works perfectly now!

Resume Forlorn discussion.

Quote from Squad

Valve just released more info about the vrad update. I'm sure you'll be interesed in it

It seems for some people it works just fine to just decompile the map and load it into Hammer, while for others it's littered with missing models (like for me). I explained it here how you can fix this (unless your problem is something else, but then just let us know).

I opened the .bsp with GCFScape to see if anything was packed, and I didn't see anything. You extracted them from the .bsp? I have this issue with other maps as well.

Quote from LizardPL

DropBox + Trello

So you guys don't split up the VMF using version control? Do you just tell each other via Steam when you're about to start working on it so you don't have conflicting changes?

How are you guys managing the files across 3 people? Are you using Hammer's version control system and DropBox or GitHub or something?

The HL inspiration is readily apparent. You are a master texture artist! All the little references you're dropping in are a great touch.

I'm wondering about something a bit unrelated. When you started using the new Nuke assets, did you decompile the map or find them using console commands in-game or is there a separate folder in materials/models for the new assets? I ask because I'm having trouble decompiling the map. BSPSrc does it with no errors, but in Hammer all the models show up as errors. As far as I can tell the assets are in the .vpk so I'm at a loss. This has happened with a number of other official maps, though not all. Do you have experience with this?

Sorry for the tangential question, looking forward to beta1!

Quote from jackophant

Ah, yeah I'll give that a shot.

I have to put my hands up and say I don't actually understand what the light_directional is meant to do. It seems to fulfil similar/same role as light_environment.

I only have it due to taking lighting from another map and didn't take the time to understand what it does. Documentation on it is pretty barren as well.

light_directional is like the twin of env_cascade_lighting, the entity that controls the cascade shadow mapping (super accurate real time shadows). The light_environment is what casts the light and sets angles and the other two are what control the shadow maps.

Saying that, I don't actually think they're necessary to have because the shadow maps get generated without either of the entities.

Was taking a look at Militia tonight and I saw this:

[Blocked Image: http://puu.sh/mCgB1/c5b2922bad.jpg]

I had always assumed this was a model, but it's actually a group of brushes tied to a func_rotating. How is this done? I've always thought Hammer should have some kind of "distribute selection" menu or something, but I don't think it does so I'm really confused as to how this was done.

I've known about Hammer for about 3 years and I've always wanted to make a map for TF2 or CS, maybe even HL2. The thing is, I've never been able to do it. I've watched and read many, many tutorials on many subjects in Hammer so I feel I have the technical skill to at least work through some alphas, but I have no ideas. I can't figure out how to start a map and block out a layout that's all my own. I think I'm so afraid of making something bad that I over-analyze every brush I make right from the start. I don't know how to proceed.

How do you guys start/plan your maps?

How do you create your custom textures? I know most of your geometry is textured in stuff you create, so I'm wondering about your process. Do you use photos you've taken and tile them in Photoshop or do you procedurally generate them or create them from scratch or what? And what about the maps you use? Just albedo and normal? Really interested in your process since you create so many and they look so nice.

Are you using an ambient_generic to play the sound or is it referenced in your soundscapes? If you're sure your loop points are set correctly, check to be sure that you've unticked the "is NOT looped" flag in the ambient_generic.

Source can accept any of the settings you listed, it is up to you to decide on each based on file size and application. If your sound is relatively dark, you can probably get away with 22khz or even 11khz since higher frequencies will be less prevalent to begin with. You should only use stereo for global sounds (that is, sounds that are played all around you when they're enabled) in my opinion as positional sounds will be better without different information baked in either channel, which would mess with how it sounds as you change your perspective to it in game.

Hope this helps!

Thanks for the responses so far guys. I suppose I should look around for some grunge brushes for Photoshop. Any suggestions?

Also, my tiling is not very good as you've pointed out Vorontsov. Every tutorial on the internet seems to explain it in similar ways. They all use the clone stamp tool to remove seams created when you offset the texture so it tiles on itself. It's not a very good way of doing things as it still remains very obvious in more regular patterned textures like wood planks that it was simply offset. Is there anything else I can do for this? That Insurgency texture looks 100% unique all the way across it. Could it have been a picture offset like mine at some point, and then painted over a bunch to make it look as good and original as it does?

I've been playing a lot of Insurgency recently and have been really impressed by the gorgeous textures and sound design on display in that game. I've been trying to create my own tileable textures for awhile now using my own photos, but haven't really been getting anywhere close to something workable. Here's an example:

The original photo:

[Blocked Image: http://puu.sh/iz7pS/0b5e587d22.png]

The 512x512 texture:

[Blocked Image: http://puu.sh/iz6Z0/cda1f60cc2.png]

As you can see, it's very obviously one image offset and cleaned up a little. Ugly. Nothing interesting about it. I copied and pasted a couple of the planks to go over more obviously repeating planks, but it doesn't help much. Compare this to one of the gorgeous wood textures in Insurgency:

[Blocked Image: http://puu.sh/iz7At/1619b07e90.png]

So much more going on! No obvious repetitions! Gorgeous grain that actually has depth and looks old and worn. How did they do this? I downloaded Quixel dDo (the legacy version) awhile ago but I think you need to have a mesh to bake maps you should have already made for it to actually use dDo. Any thoughts?